The Mighty Return of Zack De La Rocha

Thursday, July 17, 2008 | 9:04 AM

I waited seven years for Rage Against the Machine to reunite (which finally happened last year), and I've been waiting even longer for Zack De La Rocha's solo album to drop, an album which he supposedly teamed up with DJ Shadow, NIN's Trent Reznor, The Roots' ?uestlove (who, by the way, called the recordings "dangerous, scary") and a slew of other musicians. I don't know whether De La Rocha suffered from a case of self consciousness or perfectionism, but sources have told me not to expect the album anytime soon (which probably means "never").

So you could imagine my delight, when I found out that De La Rocha (on keyboards and vocals) would be teaming up with former Mars Volta drummer, Joe Theodore, to form the group One Day As A Lion. Their self-titled debut EP (featuring five songs) will be released next week, and if you don't believe they're actually going to release material, look no further than their myspace page, where this week they posted their very first song, "Wild International."

"Wild International" is a stripped down hip-hop track (just rhymes, keys, and drums), but I gotta say, the energy is great and I'm liking what I hear so far!

The band offers the following:

"One Day As A Lion is both a warning delivered and a promise kept."

"A defiant affirmation of the possibilities that exist in the space between kick and snare. It's a sonic reflection of the visceral tension between a picturesque fabricated cultural landscape, and the brutal socioeconomic realities it attempts to mask. One Day As A Lion is a recorded interaction between Zack de la Rocha and Jon Theodore from Los Angeles, California."

"The name taken from the infamous 1970 black and white, captured by legendary Chicano photographer George Rodriguez featuring a center framed tag on a white wall in an unspecified section of Boyle Heights. It reads: 'It's better to live one day as a lion, than a thousand years as a lamb.' This record is a stripped down attempt to realize this sentiment in sound."